In Vermont, a local tragedy has become a national concern about farming, animal care, negligence, accidents and the law.

Last July, a Scottish Highlander bull walked out of Craig Mosher’s fence – not for the first time – and was struck by a car driven by Jon Bellis, 62.

Bellis and the bull were both killed, Bellis’s wife Kathryn survived the crash and is helping to lead a campaign that seeks to make the accident a felony crime, not an inevitable fact of animal life.

Mosher, a popular excavator in Killington, Vt., has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, a homicide charge punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Kathryn Bellis argues that the case is about extreme negligence, not farming or animal welfare. The local prosecutor agrees.

Farmers and many animal lovers and friends of Mosher are deeply concerned about the case, fearing it could sent insurance rates skyrocketing for people with animals and transform animal escapes – for all of American legal history considered accidents – into criminal cases. If so, many animals would face euthanization, many farmers would face ruinous new costs, many people would forego living with them.

Lawyers would step right into the middle of the historic and very wonderful human animal bond.

The Vermont Farm Bureau is asking the legislature to pass new laws protecting farmers and animal lovers from criminal charges when their cows, horses, dogs or cats escape and cause accidents. Ms. Bellis is an articulate and understandably passionate advocate for the prosecution of Mosher.

She lost her beloved husband of more than 40 years in a brutal accident that she says was preventable. Mosher is not a farmer, she argues, his bull escaped many times, and the case is about negligence and safety.

When I first wrote about this case her on the blog, the story got 10,000 shares on Facebook and many messages from all over the country expressing concern that animal escapes – common to almost every farmer and animal lover – might now be considered crimes punishable by devastating lawsuits and jail.

The police released details about the many calls made about Mosher’s bull being out and in the road, including several the week of the accident. For me, the case became a bit gray, not so black-and-white.

As happens in legal conflicts, there is no real discussion or negotiation, just a settling in and digging in of opposite sides. Mosher, a local hero for the unpaid work he did freeing people and opening roads after Hurricane Irene. faces a long and excruciating ordeal.  Farmers everywhere, already under siege from low milk and food prices, corporate competition, and a culture that is increasingly removed from farming and the real lives of animals, have a lot to worry about.

Ms. Bellis may or not be justified in her campaign to see this case prosecuted as a criminal case – that is not for me to decide – but there is not much doubt that the case has opened a door that could radically alter farming and the lives of anyone who loves and lives with animals – yes, certainly including horse and dog and cat lovers.

If the case stands, rightfully or not, it seems almost certain that insurance rates will go up for farmers and many animal owners. Farmers will find it harder to lease land from other property owners. Many will keep their animals confined, or switch to less risky crops and other kinds of farming. Very few farmers can afford the kinds of fences that are escape-proof, and there is little evidence short of maximum-security prisons that there is such a thing.

I buy the best an safest fences available. The fences on my small farm cost over $9,000.

But animal escapes have always been a side effect of living with animals.

They are an integral part of rural life, and of life with pets.

I had a donkey who learned to unlatch a gate, another who squeezed under a very expensive fence to get at some alfalfa. I’ve had many dogs slip out of doors and windows. I’ve had sheep who dive right through electric fences when their wool is thick. I had a steer jump right over a five-foot fence.  I don’t know a dairy farmers whose cows have not gotten into the road. They are all horrified at the idea that this is now a potential crime, a frightening new door for many lawyers, always looking for new turf to litigate in our very litigious world.

If you look at the news, you can see there hardly anything is considered an accident any longer, we always look for someone to blame, someone to sue.

In rural America and farming communities, animal escapes are about community, not crime. People look out for each other, stop and help to get cows back inside fences. Farmers will tell you they often meet their neighbors that way. In pursuing a serious case like the Mosher case, it is not clear that the prosecutors have any real idea about the implications of their indictment, they certainly haven’t been willing to explain it much or ally the fears it has provoked.

This case is not typical of farm escapes. Someone died, and that is rare, and there is considerable evidence to suggest the bull had escaped a number of times, and that Mosher could have been more vigilant and responsive.

But that is not really the only issue, tragic as it is.

The issue is also whether this kind of neglect, if it occurred, constitutes a homicide, and involuntary manslaughter is a homicide charge. Should Mosher be threatened with jail for up to 15 years because the prosecutor wants to make a point? Is there no other legal recourse or punishment better and more realistic than a homicide charge?

The very indictment has changed the environment in which people and animals live together. Some may think this is about time, others feel is another form of disconnection in our world, another loss of community and peace of mind, the gradual death of the idea that sometimes life just happens.

The police and local prosecutors are not really the proper institutions to work out issues of animal care and neglect or to think them through more carefully.

For one thing, every animal escape – whether it involves a cow, a horse, or a golden retriever – involves neglect.

None of us can always be so vigilant and wealthy and alert to create structures and environments that make animal escapes impossible. Hardly any farmer can afford to build miles of escape-proof fencing. Fences short out when it rains, are wrecked by trees and floods, overgrown by weeds, damaged in accidents, often moved or opened by powerful and determined animals curious to cross the road.

Do we really wish to live in a culture that treats a dog escape like a criminal offense if it  results in accident and injury, even death?  A lot of us will be headed to court.

None of this is the fault of Kathryn Bellis, or even her concern really. I don’t believe anyone should or could fault her for seeking  her own justice. She is trying to make certain no one else’s spouse or child does the way her husband did, killed in a collision with an animal on a highway just minutes after someone had warned the animal’s owner that it was loose.

But it is the role of government and legislators to consider the consequences, and they could be very real.

If you are a farmer or an animal owner, the question, I think, is this: what, exactly, is the boundary between neglect and homicide?  What is preventable and what is not?

When does an almost inevitable kind of accident become a crime?